Tackle relative poverty, campaigners tell Cameron

Child poverty campaigners have told Conservative leader David Cameron to back increasing benefits and low pay after a Tory MP called on the party to tackle relative poverty.

Child Poverty Action Group chief executive Kate Green said the party’s anti-poverty strategy needed to go beyond promising a greater role for social enterprises to backing increased incomes for poorer people.

Her comments come after Tory MP Greg Clark produced a report for the party’s social justice policy commission calling for the Tories to concentrate on fighting relative, not absolute poverty.

Clark said relative poverty was important because it separated poorer people from the rest of the population, deepening social exclusion.

In a second report, he criticised Labour’s record on tackling poverty, saying its child poverty target – to eliminate family incomes below 60 per cent of the median – had diverted attention from the very poorest.

Cameron will deliver the Scarman Lecture on the theme of new routes to social justice tomorrow.